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Tuesday, 20 May 2014

Creativity

The truly creative person is one who
can think crazy; ……..The creative person is flexible—he is able to change as
the situation changes, to break habits, to face indecision and changes in
conditions without undue stress.

Creativity involves breaking out of
established patterns in order to look at things in a different way.

Edward deBono

Creativity requires to let go of
certainties.

Erich Fromm

Chance favors the prepared mind.

Pasteur

You need chaos in your
soul to give birth to a dancing star.

Nietsche

Introduction

Creativity is a
mental activity, with perception, thinking and imagination going hand in hand.
It involves generation of new ideas or
concepts, or new associations between or among existing ideas or concepts. To
pu it simply, it is the act of making something new.

Creative thinking
is also ‘divergent thinking’ when it considers a variety of thoughts; it is
also ‘autistic’ thinking when it indulges in free association where it can see
private meanings which may not occur even to intellectuals.

Creative thinkers may
be intellectuals but are definitely talented in some special way.
They desire to be creative, they believe there is a solution, they relentlessly
pursue the solution for its own sake, they are highly motivated
(intrinsically), are self-directed (no one need prompt them), are self-starting
(without external push), are diligent, are independent in their judgements, are
self-assertive and do use their talents optimally, do work hard incessantly,
consciously and subconsciously. They have such a mind-set that even though they
are not mentally busy with the problem, ‘chance’ seems to hand the solution to
them. And they seemed to arrive through accidentinsights or flashes.

Some famous creative thinkers

Newton got his ‘flash’
as he noticed that when he got into the tub exactly the same amount of water
flowed over the side as the volume of his body that was in the water.

Sir Jadish Chandra Bose
was thought crazy when he suggested that the plants had a life of their
own and were subject to fatigue, recovery, depression and exaltation. He proved
this with his ‘crescograph’—an instrument that could record the reaction of
plants to manures, poisons, that could show plants are capable of feeling, that
they have a sixth sense which tells them of the approach of a stranger.

Alexander Graham Bell’s
dream of making human voice move from one ear to another without the owners
being close to each other was considered ‘wild’. He did work hard, kept
experimenting, and ‘chance’ provided him the clue.

Alexander Fleming chanced
upon pencillin when, the unusual scientist that he was, he didn’t throw
away the contaminated culture but was instead interested in the mouldspore that dropped on the culture plate, and he
noted that the ‘contamination’ was killing germs.

‘You cannot teach a man anything; you can
only help him to find it within himself,’ says

Galileo.

The desire to be
creative, the relentless pursuit of a solution for its own sake, the intrinsic
motivation are generally innate in a creative thinker. But it is
possible to identify or locate such people or those who by their behaviour do
indicate a clear ‘leaning’ towards creativity, and it’s equally possible to provide
an environment and hope for the best.

Besides, several
driving forces like a rapidly expanding marketplace, increasing
competitiveness, diverse interests of consumers have driven business houses to
plan for and provide an innovation-conducive environment. So that those who
have somehow managed to retain their inherent creative talents despite a
unhelpful formal education system can be useful to themselves and to the society.

Creativity Techniques for short-term job activities

(i) At group level

There are time-bound job activities that
can pose problems for which solutions will be needed. When a large number of
employees are to be involved for sharing of thoughts freely without fear or
favour, seminars and symposiums can be arranged. More importantly, brainstorming
sessions could be held when a smaller number of people need to come together
for engaging their minds.

These sessions could be held in an open,
free atmosphere when members could air their thoughts without prejudice,
without being considered crazy, wild or silly because the intention is to
gather as many thoughts as possible before they can seriously consider them for
discussion, critical analysis and then arrive at consensus. They can promote
cross-fertilization because people working together can think up of new ideas
that may not strike them when they work alone. As there are more individuals,
these sessions can help them look at all the aspects from as many angles as
they are members.

(ii) Thought
gathering at individual level

1. Allow your mind to roam freely. If
necessary, take a walk, let your mind spin. Have a

pen and a writing pad at the ready. As thoughts flow, write them down.
Don’t

worry now about whether they make sense or not.

2. Decide how many ideas will satisfy you
before you go to the next step of looking at

them in order to analyze them.

3. Once you have the required number, pause
for a moment to decide if they are enough

or you’d like a few more to crop up. If the latter, go on thinking, who
knows, some

more thoughts may occur to you.

4. Discuss the problem with someone who is
no way connected to the job in hand. Your

friend or neighbour may surprise you.

5. Think about the problem just before
going to sleep. Tell yourself you’re going to

dream about a solution to the problem. And before you know what has
happened, you

may really end up dreaming a way of solving the problem.

6. Think about the problem when your mind
is fresh—be it in the morning, be it late in

the evening.

7. Think of the problem in visuals. That
is, form images in your mind. They help you to

see the problem in different perspectives. They give life and colour to
your ideas.

8. If you can, put around you objects
related to the problem so that they may trigger a

over and over again: ‘A, therefore B,
therefore C, therefore D, and then you get stuck

and ask yourself, ‘where can I go from
here?’ Backtrack, say, to B and see if you can

proceed from there.

10. Ask yourself why the
problem exists at all. Think about the background to the

problem to see if it can throw light upon
the problem itself so that you can handle it

differently.

Probably there are
certain other things you can add to this list and go about solving
problems.

Lateral thinking

You’re thinking
laterally when you move away from conventional thinking and look for novel
solutions. When you think laterally, you produce a solution that no other
person can ever think of. The point of lateral thinking
is that many problems require a different perspective to solve successfully.

Lateral thinking

· recognizes dominant ideas that polarize the perception of a
problem,

· avoids traditional ways of looking for solutions,

· uses imagination to look at a problem differently.

Of course, there’s an element of cleverness
in lateral thinking.

A few instances

1. DeBono has this anecdote:

A merchant owed money to a
moneylender. He agreed

to the moneylender’s suggestion that
the debt could be

settled by selecting one of the two
stones the moneylender

would put in a bag and that if his
daughter picked the white

stone, he wouldn’t have to pay back
the debt but if his daughter

picked the black one, the moneylender
would take the daughter

as his wife. However, the moneylender
"fixed" the outcome by

putting two black stones in the bag.
The daughter saws this.

She picked a stone out of the bag,
and immediately dropped it

onto the path full of other stones.
She said that the stone she picked

must have been the opposite color of
the one remaining in the bag.

If the moneylender called her bluff,
he would be found to be dishonest,

so he left the place without another
word. The daughter solved the

problem using lateral thinking.

2. In The Mahabharatha, an Indian epic, the Kauravas and the
Pandavas

are getting ready for an epic battle
at Khurkshethra. Lord

Krishna knows that Gandhari
wants to pass on her spiritual

powers to her son Duryodhana so that
he would not be killed

in the battle. So when Duryodhana is
on his way to meet his

mother, Lord Krishna suggests to him that
since no grown man

should appear before his mother
naked, he should cover his loins.

Duryodhana acts accordingly and meets
his mother. Gandhari

removes her blindfold and starts
transmitting her powers through

her eyes on to the body of Duryodhana as she
passes her eyes

from head to toe. To her horror, she
finds the loins of Duryodhana

covered and fails to protect that
area.

Lord Krishna used his lateral
thinking ability to have a portion of

Duroyodhana’s unprotected body so
that Bhima could kill him,

striking at the loins.

3. Birbal served at Akbar’s court, a muslim
king who ruled Inida,

and was known for solving problems in
a very unusual manner.

Once a rich man approached him and requested
his help

in finding out who stole a silver
plate from his house.

He told Birbal that if at all he
suspected only the servants.

Birbal went to the rich man’s house,
called the servants and told

them that only one of them
could have stolen the silver plate and

that a confession would lead to a
pardon. When no servant responded,

he ordered each one of them to bring
to him a stick of the same size.

Then Birbal told them to take the
sticks home and bring them back

to him the next day. He also warned
them that the person who returned

with his stick grown one inch longer
would be thief.

The thief was so frightened that he
could not take the risk of the stick

growing one inch longer. So he cut the
stick one inch shorter and slept.

When he woke up, he found that the
stick had not grown one inch longer.

Naturally!

Birbal thought laterally and identified
the thief in a manner no one else

The distincition
between the two expressions in one of perspective. Both are novel and
appropriate. But creativity provides the concept and innovation realizses the
concept. Creativity is of the mind and innovation is of the ‘matter’.
Creativity is the idea and innovation is its shape.

All the same,
creativity is preferred in ‘art’ disciplines whereas innovation in ‘science’
and ‘business’ disciplines.

About Me

I hail from Thamizh Nadu, a Southern state of India. I speak Thamizh, Thelugu, English and Hindi.

I served for 43 years as a teacher of English in schools and colleges in India, Ethiopia and Nigeria. I've published several articles on ELT and of general interest in the USA, Ethiopia and India. I've presented several papers in national and international conferences. I've written several course books for the English syllabuses of Bachelor of Engineering of Madras University, Anna University and JNTU, Hyderabad, for public consumption as well.